3 hours ago, dcarch said:
If salt boiled pasta is better, why not just add more salt when the pasta is made?
dcarch
I found this question very interesting, and on a little research, I found we are far from the only people to have contemplated this issue.
I thought I had read in my hard copy of Marcella Hazan's "The Classic Italian Cook Book" that she said it was because the salt did not dissolve properly and caused unsightly white(r) specks in the dough. I couldn't find it by manually scanning the logical areas of my book where this might be mentioned, so I won't quote her on that.
There are many thoughts and much discussion here an eG on this thread and this one. There are also opinions all over the map elsewhere on the web. I liked this opinion from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt from 4 years ago on Reddit the best.
I haven't made homemade pasta yet, but when I do cross it off my bucket list, and I will, I shall be pulling out Marcella's book with almost 8 pages of instructions including illustrations, and using that as my guide. I will use only eggs and flour.
Sorry for the multiple edits. I was trying to take you straight to Kenji's post, but I'm a miserable failure, so you are just going to have to scroll down a little ways in the Reddit link, if you want to read it.